When a faxed survey marked "URGENT Please respond by Monday, Oct. 26, 1998" crossed his desk last month, Phil Jackson, co-owner of Nature's Nursery, didn't.

Said he figured it didn't apply to him. And he's right.

That was the reaction of a lot of small business owners in Georgia who received the Georgia Department of Natural Resources form questioning them about the number of vehicles in their company fleets. The distribution of the survey appeared almost scattershot in its approach: the publisher of The Citizen, for example, with no company-owned vehicles at all, was among those whose fax machine spit out the six-page communique.

In fact, in Fayette and Coweta, large fleets of cars, trucks, vans, and buses belong primarily to governments, either municipal or county. Peachtree City's 45 emergency vehicles (police cars, fire engines, ambulances) and more than 50 public works trucks and administrative cars, for example, comprise the kind of fleet the state survey is targeting.

According to the cover letter, the state's Clean Fueled Fleet Program is required under the federal Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and is administered by the Georgia EPD. In force since Sept. 1, the CFFP is attempting to identify business fleets of ten or more vehicles which will be subject to CFFP regulations.

Companies with fewer than ten fleet vehicles need not comply with CFFP rules. They are encouraged, however, to return the survey in order to help update EPD's records. Those that do not will receive a follow-up telephone call.

Succinctly put, CFFP's goal is to improve air quality, initially by making three of every ten light-duty vehicles (read sedans and small trucks) and 50 percent of trucks (up to 26,000 pounds GVWR) meet more stringent emissions standards. Ultimately half or more of fleet vehicles will meet "clean" requirements, and the government's expectation is that manufacturers will switch to more environmentally positive system designs.

According to Marlin Gottschalk, program manager with EPD's Air Protection Branch, all purchases by qualifying fleet owners during the 1999 model year need to comply with new clean-fuel requirements. "If [a business owner] is ordering 10 new light vehicles, three must meet standards," he said. "If 10 new heavy-duty trucks, five must comply."

Those numbers ratchet up in model year 2000 to 50 percent of all new vehicles, and to 70 percent for light-duty vehicles purchased in the year 2001 and following.

Retro-fitting existing equipment for clean fuels, such as compressed natural gas, "flex-fuels," or propane, will count toward compliance.

The survey is also eliciting information about centralized fueling: whether the targeted fleet is fueled from a central location, such as Peachtree City's public works' fuel station. In addition, it will help pinpoint where the location of such a station would be most advantageous to fleet owners.

Why target motor vehicles, and why now?

"We've been regulating stationary [pollution] sources for 20 years," Gottschalk said, alluding to the power plants and manufacturing operations that used to smudge the skies of North American cities. "They've made significant reductions in the past 20 years we want to have the same affect on non-stationary sources."

Motor vehicles have been identified as the largest single source of air pollution.

Fayette County is among the 13 metro Atlanta counties whose air is chronically in "nonattainment" of federal clean air standards. CFFP regulations apply not only to fleet operators within the nonattainment region, but also to those operating within the region half or more of the time, even though registered elsewhere.

Ron Methier, chief of the Air Protection Branch of Georgia's EPD, said the CFFP rules are not terribly different from those applicable to cars built since 1975.

"Your family car must meet certain EPA standards," he said. "These are similar to that, but [fleet vehicles] are required to emit less pollutants than the normal car.

"The reality is that it's very difficult to design a gasoline-fueled vehicle that meets the requirement. When standards are there to get the reduction, we hope it will stimulate Detroit to build these.

"What the EPA is fixing to do in the next 30 to 60 days is to come out with proposed changes," Methier continued. "You have to meet certain standards now, but they could be cleaner. They really need to tell manufacturers they must design their cars cleaner, and they will eventually, but it will be the 2004 model year before they are really out there for sale, and 2007, 2008, or 2010 before they are commonplace."

Methier added that the CFFP rules are specifically designed for a fleet large enough that go back to a central station for fuel that meets the requirements.

The current survey is not the first such questionnaire sent to Georgia businesses.

"We're updating our database," Gottschalk said. "We got 65 [percent] to 75 percent on our first mailing three years ago. On the second mailing we got more, and then there was telephone follow-up."

Four thousand surveys went out on the first mailing, and identified 600 fleets. This time, a widespread mailing of between 8,000 and 10,000 queries covered many more businesses and governments over an expanded geographic area.

If it appeared hit-or-miss, Gottschalk said, that's because "there is no existing database of companies that own vehicles. We literally have to look at each owner's name; we've used some business directories. The state does not have a very accurate tracking of vehicles."

The following Web sites contain more information about the Clean Fueled Fleet Program:

www.ganet.org/dnr/environ/

www.epa.gov/omswww

www.4cleanair.com

www.ganet.org/services/ocode/ocgsearch.htm